Am 24.10.2006 um 22:28 schrieb Lukas Renggli:

>> > Having all the data in RAM scales the same way as having all the  
>> data
>> > on disk. Linearly. IIRC Google can hold almost the entire web in  
>> RAM.
>> > So there is virtually no limit to that. I know this is not  
>> clever. I
>> > just say it is possible and the cost is not excessive (holding  
>> Minnow
>> > in RAM, not the web).
>>
>> I thought we were having a serious discussion, and not just pointing
>> fingers at RAM prices. Or pointing to non-existent VM technology, as
>> you did in another thread.
>
> I strongly second Philippe.
>
> The Squeak VM technology will simply die, if it is unable to
> efficiently address more than 2 GB of data and process its
> calculations on only 1 CPU. There are technologies like memory-mapped
> files that transparently give an unlimited amount of RAM (if the GC
> was a bit smarter ...)

Sure. That's just irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

>> I stand by my assessment that holding *everything* including all
>> versions of all pages and also all uploaded files in RAM is just
>> plain stupid.
>
> We are used to be called ridiculous and stupid. No problem.

Come on, I wasn't calling you stupid. Below you actually say that you  
are not doing what I described - so why are you upset? And wouldn't  
you agree that *if* someone would hold, for example, all uploaded  
files of a large Wiki in the Squeak image running on the current VM,  
that this would be highly unreasonable? I can imagine systems that  
allow that, I pointed out ideas for such systems in fact, but for our  
immediate problem we need to stick to what we have.

> And yes, we do not keep files in RAM. We store them on the file-system
> so that Apache can serve them quickly: reading the file into the image
> and pushing it into a socket way too slow anyway. And yes, Apache
> caches often requested files in the RAM.

So we are not in disagreement after all.

- Bert -